


The awakening of The Passion

by HelenofTroy



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Unexpected attraction, love and hate, pain shared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:32:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenofTroy/pseuds/HelenofTroy
Summary: Cosimo is about to discover how his father has arranged his marriage with a woman of the Italian nobility.All his dreams are destroyed, broken in pieces under his feets.His life like an artist lost forever, all his dreams doomed to failure. Bianca is gone, his heart has no reason to live. He hates everything about his new life, even that woman named Contessina with whom he had already dreamed...





	

**Author's Note:**

> For kyku, who loved the romance so complicated, extraordinary and dazzling between Cosimo de Medici & Contesina di Bardi.  
> Asked me for a new meeting for them, after he saw Contesina being with Bianca, in the distance as my first fanfiction "A couple like them". Cosimo knows her face, her light steps, how is her true love but...

The door sounded loudly twice.  
-Maese Medici, please  
The voice of his young servant Cesare woke him with difficulty. Cesare was so stupid. It was too early. But In front of Cosimo a young woman prayed in the front of the altar of that hermitage where he had seen it. Cosimo was running toward her, he had entered alone, Bianca was not there. He wanted ask to that woman who was she really, if she was real, because if she was a nymph he would ask her a desire: to be the most amazing artist in Florencia. But something stopped him. Cosimo had put his hand in the woman of dark hair who was sitting back. He wanted see her face.

He almost had touched her hair...but the Cesare´s voice again interrupted him. The nymph had been so near. Damn it! Cosimo felt how he was in his bed. All had been a dream. 

Cosimo opened his mouth in an interminable yawn, and stretching his arms fixed his blue eyes swollen from so much weeping on the carved wooden ceiling.

-No, go away -Cosimo said to Cesare with a voice of bitterness that pierced the walls.  
Outside, he heard the voice of Giovanni, his father. Was there, just in the long corridor. 

-The old parrot is here-said laughing with the anger of an hurt child Cosimo. Inside the room only his last Bianca's portrait watched him smiling, as if she would be there listening. Cosimo felt that the tears burned his eyes again, everytime he looked the Bianca´s face in the sketch a part of his soul died.

 

"Has he not yet risen?"  
-No sir.  
"And he has not eaten last night either?"-his father was saying to the young servant. Cesare was a young man of 17, just newcomer to the house of the Medici. He had been educated from age 11 to serve in the Medici house . Cosimo had him in esteem, but he was too slow and fearful.  
-No sir. I pulled the two trays intact into the kitchen-said Cesare  
-Well, this can not go on like this. Please, Cesare, leave us.

Cesare was in terrible fear of all those family fights. "Learn to be at a distance, my son" his mother had said to him a thousand of times in her letters, yet she used to do. And that he did. 

Like Cosimo would have wanted to do. Write his own life, in a long distance, far of the Medici, far of Florencia. For Bianca he was decided to leave Florencia behind. Yes, Florencia, the same city adored for him, whom he wanted dazzle once with his art. 

His father opened the door, and found to his son in the bed, expecting anything. 

-Cosimo...  
-No, let me alone-Cosimo answered to the unspoken question of his father.  
-Cosimo, you have to understand how i see this, how the rest of world is gonna to see us if you persist in maintaining this absurd behavior-Giovanni took the Bianca´s portray and sat on his son's bed in silence. Like when Cosimo was a boy.  
-Don´t dare to touch her-said Cosimo ripping the paper from his father's hands.

-Cosimo! That's enough, do you hear me? Enough. It's not a woman, it's a paper. It is a damn drawing, a bad portrait of an inferior woman. Damn it I'm offering you a life greater than any man in Florence ever imagined for himself, and all I get from you is ingratitude-Her father's voice thundered cruel and determined. But there was something piercing in his tone that made Cosimo look at him. He felt sorry for his father. How impossible was it? He saw that old man who was everything for him to shake like a leaf and felt that his love of son could with any reticence.  
The inner storm that he lived was nothing that Giovanni had taken from him. Cosimo did not want hurt his father, but not even he had the right of decide his life. 

-You have hurt me, father. You did not have the right -said Cosimo, changing his tears for a fake smile-do you really think that i´ll be happy with a fat doll like wife and counting your gold coins the rest of my life? They should have named you Midas instead of Giovanni. Midas Medici. 

-This is not a matter of joke, Cosimo. I´m worried for you. You hadn't a bite since two days ago. And well -a repentine cough interrumped his father. 

-Oh i will say that for you father. Today will come my fiancee, Contessina di Bardi,the daughter of Alessandro. And i must look like a Charming Prince for her, and i look like I look like a vulgar servant. I have not cleaned up yet, I have not changed clothes or boots. And if she sees me she will flee in terror. Do you really think I care? That I want her dowry, her money? Do you know me so little?

-The only important thing is your life. And the honor of ..-Cosimo got up suddenly and made A reverence mocking his father. 

-The honor Medici. The honor of this family. Yes, but...what your clients don´t know is that the Medici family does not have an honor to defend. 

-Cosimo! You´re a shame. Between Lorenzo and you i don´t know who is the genius and who´s the unconscious-his father said in soft voice-all what i have done in my life have been for this family. I´d give my life, until my soul for this family, for the Medici name that you such despise. Only God knows how i have treated of understand you Cosimo. I even I encouraged you to enter art school because I knew you loved drawing. But I did not know how much you would fall in love with that art and that woman, son.

Giovanni was broken. So broken like Cosimo.  
Cosimo knew that it was a hard road, but that his father also had to travel, that was the price of his ambition. He bent down and touched his knees saying: 

-Do you know what i was dreaming, father?  
-No, i don´t know, Cosimo -his father´s tears falled from his face, was so painful see his father cry like that. All the determination of Giovanni was saying goodbye to its own strenght. The father was fighting against the banker in him. 

-I was dreaming with a woman that i saw in an hermitage a few days ago. She was with a young man, he will probably be her husband right now. She was not the kind of woman a man would look for. There was something misterious and impossible about her, ideal and distant. She was as if one of the Caryatids of the Erechtheion had come to life.

-What do you want, son? Let me know that and i will give that to you, but you have a duty with this family and with your name, bringing to him honor and money-said Giovanni. 

-That woman of my dream is real, father. She exists. And what i mean with this is that i would be happy having the woman who i have chosen for live my life. I don´t want another wife, or bride. I had to Bianca. And you made her leave for anything. For money, always is the money. I dream with something clean, something pure and great, i dream with the love, with a woman to sharing my life, and you talk to me of duty, of golden. You are nothing to do with me. Ok i will obey you. I will be ready for when Contesina and Alessandro Di Bardi come. 

His father wiped his eyes with his handkerchief in silence and walked away looking at the floor.  
Cosimo knew he would never forgive that. Giovanni had not cried for years. 

But he never would forgive to him the fact of have to force him. He would never forgive the fact of forcing him to choose a horrible, dead life. Cosimo felt as if his father would be burying him alive, putting the lid of the coffin on his face full of life. And then the gravestone on his coffin ... someone was stepping on his grave. 

At three o'clock Cosimo was on the first floor, with his family sitting in the fire, waiting for his fiancée.

-Don´t worry Cosimo, they say that Contesina is beautiful, i have a portray of her here, somewhere-Lorenzo tried in n vain to make him rejoice. Lorenzo was wearing red and gold. He looked like the groom. Cossimo had chosen a black doublet and a long shirt, with a double collar around the neck of the latest Florentine fashion. Her messy black hair as night did not hide the bitterness of a fake smile for her brother.

-I don´t care how she´s, i just care how to escape of this commitment that´s killing me-said Cosimo trying to hurt his mother for who he has dead like his twin brother, and trying to touch his father´s stone heart. His father was reading, her mother sew. They were like two statues, they weren´t humans. At all. 

Lorenzo got up and pushed him slowly against one of the windows, while he said:  
-I have heard that Contessina was secretly betrothed to an Italian nobleman from the provinces, called Ezio Contarini. Listen, talk to her, and make the decision together. She's being forced, like you. His father has lost his mortgage. 

-Do you think that our parents would listen us?  
-Only one, no. But yes to both-his brother's eyebrows arched, playful. His dear Lorenzo, he always had the solution.

The hope came back to Cosimo secretly again and with his male beauty back again. His brother watched as his cheeks regained color, while his eyes shone like two lights at the mere thought of being free again.

Cosimo clasped his hands and ran down to the great hall, to look out the window. A coach arrived. The great hall was deserted. No one would occupy that area.

Then at that moment, and only then did Cosimo realized how ironic the life could be, and how all determination could flee like the wind, in a moment of weakness.  
An old man dressed in black, with his black widow's hat, and the same dazzling woman he had met in the distance, on the Palatine Hill, stood on the chariot. She was Contessina Di Bardi, his fiancee.  
The woman with whom he had dreamed. For which he felt nothing, absolutely nothing more than secret admiration and a strange desire to look at her.  
The nymph whom he would ask a better life was there, in that desert corridor, while like as if by magic his father had appeared there, he summoned Cosimo to his presence, while the old father of Contesina looked at him with reproach.

-Ah, son, if you preferred that we rest in this room you could have warned us.  
Giovanni shook his hands and a legion of servants appeared, closing the windows and decorating the table with the most succulent dishes.

Cosimo saw her face slightly rosy by the long journey, and her eyes serious, honey-colored piercing his own blue eyes. Her dress was brown like her eyes. Their looks were a battle between blue & brown. Between the sea, & the honey. His father was saying something, but Cosimo did not attended him, he was just looking the object of his bitterness, the main reason for that he had lost to Bianca and his career. He was trying to reconcile like that beautiful & unattainable woman in whom he had not stopped thinking since he had seen her was his curse. Maybe that's why he'd found her on the way? It was a sign.

-Cosimo de Medici, Contessina di Bardi-Giovanni never stoped...

-Cosimo,i´m delighted-she said, bowing gracefully, lightly moving her brown gold-plated dress. Cosimo looked down at his feet. They were narrow, trapped in even lower-heeled shoes.

Their parents leave them alone, while the servants went in and out. The room smells like salmon and oranges.

Contessina brought a flower in her hand. 

-What´s ? -Cossimo asked 

-Oh is a rose, the queen of the flowers-she said almost without voice. 

Cosimo stole it from her hands and carried it to his nose, getting drunk with the perfume of the flower, with the white of her pearls. 

\- This is insulting-said Cosimo to Contessina, looking the flower. 

Contessina would have pretended not to understand the point of his words, but she did.

-No, it's rather unfair-she answered to his sentence closing her eyes. 

-Then, are you not offended? -Cosimo offered to her his hand, and together got out to the balcony. 

-Why? This is not what we want, Maese de Medici-she said-that´s the true. Despite our parents do not want hear that. This is not who we really are-she said. 

Cosimo smiled against his own will. That was incredible. His worst enemie was the only one in that damn palace who understood him by first time, just for a moment. 

-This marriage is An affront. My father sells me to the highest bidder, i knew that one day this is gonna to happen, but not so soon-she let scape those words while she threw herself on the railing with reluctance.

-To the highest bidder? Don´t talk to me in that way, signorina-Cossimo said-you don´t know me at all, you don´t dare to judge me.  
-I am not juding you, i just say the truth-she said, trying to retrieve the rose, but Cosimo closed his hand tightly. Contessina squeezed his hand but could only tear off a few pieces of petals with which she watered the floor. 

-I don´t want this marriage neither. But is inevitable-the rational mind of Cossimo was beyond his desires. He just wanted denny to that nymph full of anger her dream: marry with that young man With which he saw her in the hermitage. Why would she be happy while he had lost Bianca forever?

Cosimo put one hand on his chest, pressing the rose, while with the other pushed to Contessina against the railing of the terrace.

-Let me alone -she asked  
-No-he answered to her.  
The only thing that Cosimo intended was to see her, as he had not been able to do before, beyond all desire to scape, he wanted to find out where that ethereal beauty that Contessina had come from. Cosimo fixed his cold blue eyes on her slightly tanned face, as he placed his right hand around her waist, as her trunk leaned farther back, trying create distance with him. Guided by a strange hypnosis Contessina stretched her arms, letting herself be carried by Cosimo's movements.

-Who are you Contessina? -he answered, but she did not say anything-because i had to met you? 

-I don´t know-she said, in a whisper. The perfume of the rose mixed with that of Contessina. They were like a balm to Cossimo's heart. That strange woman brought a kind of even more strange peace.  
Cosimo felt her breasts shaking, that delicate and forbidden touch. Cosimo felt the voluptuousness of the flesh and he could not take it anymore. Nervously, he gave the warning:

-You Will be a member of my family now. You will be my Wife, and will be part of the family Medici. Your devotion won´t be for another man or lover. Your heart will rest with the Medici, your soul and your dreams will be the Medici´s dreams of greatness. You are mine now, you will be not a spy for anothers or a strange, you haven´t chose this, but you are ours now, Contessina. I am yours too, and one day will be one. If you try to betray me, you will pay this affront, you are a Medici now, be proud of it. Maybe you hate me but this is inevitable like i told you-he said. The perfume was ending, and wanted more..more of that balm. 

-I don´t hate you, i hate your words-she said, and her lips shone, red like an apple. Cosimo approached his face to her, bit a bit. First sunk his nose in her hair, slowly, feeling The velvet. After this the smell of flowers returned.

Was in her hair, in her mouth. 

Without being aware of it Cosimo brought his lips to Contessina's and abruptly drank from them, while she kept theirs trembling in the face of his passionate attack. He just was searching that perfume, sliding his lips over hers, over and over again. His thought flew away, but his hands searched for more. 

Cosimo drunk all the smell of that strange nymph, feeling in her kiss the anger & the shame at same time. Their mutual parents were there, in the next room, sealing their marriage covenant. When Cosimo Parted his mouth, he looked at her in embarrassment. His passionate outburst had no excuse. Nor his hatred for her either. Contessina was innocent.  
He loved another man as he loved another woman. That was not a crime but a truth. But that perfume was not from the woman whom he loved, but of Contessina. Cossimo tried to kiss her again, but she turned away her face, while Cossimo angry shooked her like a flower who want follow to a butterfly who is leaving it. They looked in silence each to other, while Giovanni in the doors of his balcony was looking them disapprovingly. That conduct was unseemly. Was his son intending to steal the honor of the girl, her betrothed? 

The pain in Cossimo´s eyes answered to him. She was weaking up something bad in him, something stained, dirty, dark, bad, lascivous...the hole of the passion opened to the Cossimo´s feets, and when Contessina took his hand for make the toast with their families, he felt the desire piercing his mind again, while his hand almost crushed her hand. But the passion never had been noble, Aristotle had said once. But disturbing.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes the imperfection of the world is so perfect that fate is indecipherable by me. When you think that a whole life has been wasted in the end you feel that maybe it has not been. Maybe you if don´t find the reason finale of your existence, at last will feel it.  
> That´s what i feel with Cosimo & Contessina, i don´t see why the destiny joined them, but i feel why. The words are useless here for describe that, but i trust you understand what i mean. Thanks for listen!!


End file.
